More enterprises are moving toward a centralized SIP trunking deployment to reduce costs and ease network administration, according to a survey conducted by SIP trunking provider Acme Packet (Nasdaq: APKT).

Nearly 60 of the 100 enterprises surveyed by Acme Packet said they are planning to or are already implementing centralized SIP trunking deployment as opposed to a distributed deployment, according to an Acme Packet blog post.

A centralized deployment reduces the number of SIP trunks that need to be leased from service providers, streamlines the network operations and administration and improves policy control, the blog explained.

"A lot of the companies that prefer the centralized approach have big, redundant data networks that go to all of those facilities," explained Patrick MeLampy, cofounder and CTO at Acme Packet.

"Imagine a company that has thousands of stores. They also have huge internal data networks connecting all their stores for real-time inventory management and business processes. To take advantage of that network and to consolidate all the communications into a couple of data centers is a preferred option for companies like that," MeLampy told FierceEnterpriseCommunications.

"There are some requirements for them," MeLampy continued. "They have to be able to manage QoS [quality of service] across that backbone of their large data network. They need to use tools such as MPLS. If they have those tools available and have a good network, they can exchange all of their voice and data and consolidate into two or three locations. Then, instead of having a thousand SIP trunks at the periphery, they can have a handful of big ones at the center and consolidate all of their usage into two or three places and reduce their costs dramatically."

According to a recent Forrester Consulting report commissioned by Acme Packet, a typical large enterprise that deploys a centralized SIP trunking topology using Acme Packet's enterprise session border controllers can increase its return on investment by 401 percent. The savings are achieved by eliminating TDM trunks serving each location as well as benefiting from lower per-minutes rates for VoIP. The enterprises surveyed by Forrester reported a 40 percent to 60 percent reduction in monthly service fees when replacing TDM trunks with SIP trunks.

At the same time, some enterprises benefit from having distributed SIP trunking deployment, MeLampy related. "If they don't have the ability to manage QoS in their core network or they have issues with government regulations around how calls get routed… they need SIP trunking to be decentralized and done on a site-by-site basis. There is still is an ROI in those cases but it might not be as impressive as the ROI from consolidation."

Some enterprises are opting for a hybrid approach of distributed and centralized SIP trunking deployment enabled by Acme Packet's enterprise session management. "In the end it is probably going to a mixed model for most companies," MeLampy concluded.

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